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RJ Smith
- Aug 6, 2020
- 2 min
Victoria: State of Despair
After months of on-and-off restrictions in Victoria, the state’s embattled Premier Daniel Andrews recently announced a six-week “Stage 4”...
RJ Smith
- Jul 26, 2020
- 3 min
What Literature Tells Us About Human Nature
Literary fiction is usually defined in one of three equally unhelpful ways. The first is the question begging reference to ‘works of...
RJ Smith
- May 22, 2020
- 4 min
Lockdowns and Human Rights: A British Perspective
In 2001, an activist named Lois Austin was corralled into a police cordon—or ‘kettled’—for seven hours in Oxford Circus in London during...
RJ Smith
- May 3, 2020
- 4 min
Houellebecq's 2022 Prophecy Revised
In Michel Houellebecq’s 2015 novel Soumission, Ben Abbes, leader of the French Muslim Brotherhood party, wins the 2022 French...
RJ Smith
- Apr 18, 2020
- 3 min
A Closer Look at the Swedish Model
A consensus has emerged in the West that the appropriate—indeed only—response to the spread of the coronavirus is to suspend civil...
RJ Smith
- Mar 17, 2020
- 3 min
A Jog Through Paris
I roll over at 11 am. Throat was a little sore yesterday. Was worried I had the sickness that must not be named. Decided to sleep in and...
RJ Smith
- Feb 19, 2020
- 5 min
Pell, Girard and the Scapegoat Mechanism
A few days after my recent piece on George Pell was published on Quillette, a reader contacted me through this site drawing my attention...
RJ Smith
- Jan 8, 2020
- 5 min
Is France Charlie?
France has been a crucible for radical philosophy since the eighteenth century, and was the pre-eminent centre for the arts in the...
RJ Smith
- Jan 5, 2020
- 5 min
Hemingway in Paris: Reflections on A Moveable Feast
There are certain facts many people know about Ernest Hemingway without ever reading one of his books. He was an American writer who...
RJ Smith
- Dec 18, 2019
- 3 min
New South Wales: The Nanny State
Perfect weather. Beaches. High wages. Safety. My home town should be the best city in the world. But Sydney is one of the last places I...
RJ Smith
- Dec 11, 2019
- 3 min
The Irishman Was...Disappointing
Never has a movie made me so sad. And not because a character dies or has their heart broken. The film made me sad because it utterly...
RJ Smith
- Dec 2, 2019
- 3 min
Clive James: Return to the Opal Sunset
Clive James’s life story was one of exile. Born in Kograh, a working class suburb of Sydney, he moved to England in 1961 at the age of 22...
RJ Smith
- Nov 26, 2019
- 2 min
The Best Things About Life In Paris
I brought that negative energy in my last post. But it's not all bad. Here are the seven best things about life in Paris. 1. Size The...
RJ Smith
- Nov 4, 2019
- 3 min
The Worst Things About Life in Paris
It sure is a pretty town. But Paris Syndrome—when tourists (usually Japanese) break down because the city falls so short of their...
RJ Smith
- Oct 29, 2019
- 4 min
On Joker and Christian Schad’s Pigeon Chested Man
With his black female companion, arched shoulders and prominent rib cage, several of Joaquin Phoenix’s scenes in the recently released...
RJ Smith
- Oct 19, 2019
- 8 min
Burroughs: The Ultimate Outsider
William S. Burroughs lived a life of transgression and experimentation, and for this reason is loved and hated in equal measure. Like his...
RJ Smith
- Sep 9, 2019
- 5 min
In Defence of the Past
Auguste Comte was one of the most famous and admired thinkers of the early nineteenth century, but fell into obscurity in the course of...
RJ Smith
- Aug 19, 2019
- 6 min
The 2019 Reith Lectures Reviewed
Every year the BBC invites a “significant international thinker” to give a series of lectures on a topic of the invitee’s choosing. The seri